Commentary – Page 2

23rd January 2024

Published by TheDrouth

WELCOME TO THE SHIPWRECK by Rory Olcayto

Rory Olcayto's assessment of the Glasgow problematic is highly controversial and has been doing the rounds and garnering much critical attention. The straight-talking, complacency-busting analysis and vision for a metropolitan city cannot possibly please everyone, and that, it seems, is precisely the partisan, feather-ruffling intention of the former Architects Journal editor. It was, indeed, first delivered as a talk to the Royal incorporation of Architects in Scotland. Here it is now as a readily accessible text: a provocation to civic and urban action.

2nd November 2023

Published by TheDrouth

LAOCOON AND LOSS
by
Murdo Macdonald

From Classical Antiquity through Michelangelo to Verlaine, via Godard and Tarkovsky and an essay-load of other makers, Murdo Macdonald shows us how the whole gang of western clever clogs in turn feel the pain of Laocoon - for if art shows us anything it is this: that nothing exists for sure, except the torture of the knowledge that is so, and will be so forever.

7th October 2023

Published by TheDrouth

Frances Lightbound’s
TECTONICS
by
Pia Singh

'Things in process ... objects out of place and time.' Frances Lightbound's exhibition Tectonics at the John David Mooney Foundation in Chicago, reconfigures and re-enacts the languages of architectonics and manages to refuse the colonial configurations of power and brute strength in structural materials and components. Pia Singh reviews and finds a striking refinement in these rare and enigmatic arrangements.

29th September 2023

Published by TheDrouth

PULLED BACK, MOVING FORWARD:
on Kim Moore’s ‘A Song We Destroy To Spin Again’
GREG THOMAS

For Greg Thomas, the music in Kim Moore's new release with Blackford Hill is at once a physical thing which moves, an image, and a word provoking profound affect. There is something 'urgent' here, he writes.

29th September 2023

Published by TheDrouth

SINGING FROM THE SAME HYMNBOOK by Louise Rodgers

Music to galvanise and control: a sonic authoritarianism? Louise Rodgers examines how powerful groups, institutions and individuals throughout history have hitched music to their social programmes.

9th July 2023

Published by TheDrouth

HOWSON’S INFERNO
by
GREG THOMAS

What cast of work is this, we might say of Peter Howson's new show at Edinburgh City Art Centre. He gives us a lot of matter to grapple with and a lot of things to ponder over. This is the first major retrospective of Howson's work with over 100 paintings over four floors. Arresting and compelling says Greg Thomas in review, and also grim and dark. Get along and make your own mind up is best.

2nd July 2023

Published by TheDrouth

FRAGMENTS OF OSSIAN
recast by
Murdo Macdonald

Everyone, like Samuel Johnson, has an opinion on Macpherson's Ossian, but few of us ever manage to get a hand on an actual copy of the works. Fortunately, Murdo Macdonald does the bibliographic work for us, and details the doggedness of his desultory browsings and subsequent musings which led to the composition of his own versions. (is there ever anything but versions to work through here?) So, this is the big chance to find out what it was about the versions of this poetry that set Europe aflame with romantic passion and melancholy, and, as Napoleon himself put it, 'Devour Ossian!'

9th May 2023

Published by TheDrouth

JOCKLAND RESULTS
An ODE as from 3000AD
by
Owen Dudley Edwards

Scotland's foremost Irish historian and Ireland's finest Jockstorian, Owen Dudley Edwards, finds a textless chronicle of the farcical and chaotic politics of Jockland in the 2020s. It's to be sung swiftly, though it's no song of Solomon. The rulers from Laputa assume they have (in the jargon of the period) 'taken back control', but none of them can actually determine where Jockland is, or if it even exists ...

16th April 2023

Published by TheDrouth

A LIFE EXAMINED

Hutting at Carbeth
with Morven Gregor & Gerry Loose
GREG THOMAS

The hutters at Carbeth dwell in the forest -when they can get there. They have a history: it's a green one and a working class one; it's one of urban folk in the countryside, and they're prepared to fight for it. Greg Thomas speaks to a couple who make and remake their stand in the forest.